The Past, Present and Future of Unraid on the Selfhosted Podcast


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5 minutes ago, jonp said:

Am I right in saying that the minimum price point for their servers seems to be ~25 euros per month?  Or is there a lower price point I'm not aware of?  And for that 25, you get an athlon server with 2x2TB of local storage?  Assuming that is in a RAID1, that's 2TB of protected cloud storage for 25 euros per month?  Just looking to verify if there are any other hidden costs there.  And do they provide an SLA?  What about if you need to expand?  Will they just add more storage to the server or do you have to step up to a bigger server at which point you're also going to have to do a cloud-based data migration?  Just curious how this works from them.  Seems like a really cheap hosting offer!  Oh, and is there any fee for bandwidth usage in addition to the monthly?

 

I got lucky to secure an 2 X 4 TB server or 4 TB in Raid 1 for 27 Euro.  Each action is different so the minimum price really depends if you go the action route.   It is unlimited bandwidth up or down on a gig wire.  SLA is only when server goes down and they need to bring it back up. Can't remember but is reasonable. If you move to a different or bigger server they will internally move the data for you at no cost. Is basically a server farm and you pay for a physical box and not a shared cloud environment.  For that they have something called StorageBox which is a bit more expensive.  I've been using it for few months and is rock solid.  It runs Debian and I can do whatever I want with it, except hacking LOL.  Is good stuff for sure.

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I think they drop it down to 10mbit. I have stress tested it and uploaded 30TB at some point, they can hold it alright.

 

In either case, even if the speeds are reduced for uploads, they are still bearable for the uploads. At the end of the day, it is what you value most that you should invest in most. My backups are incremental and therefore the speed reduction hasn't really impacted my ability to backup critical data as it runs over night and the chunks are not that big.

Edited by ezhik
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40 minutes ago, ezhik said:

Since we are talking about cloud backups:

 

unRAID -> duplicati (+ AES 256 encryption) -> jottacloud (unlimited @ $99/yr)

That's not a bad option at all.  If I am not intruding what kind of files are you pushing?  I mostly have phots and videos and some random work related files. 

Is duplicati pretty reliable? My last experience was not good but perhaps it will work better with jottacloud

 

Thanks much

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31 minutes ago, ezhik said:

In either case, even if the speeds are reduced for uploads, they are still bearable for the uploads. At the end of the day, it is what you value most that you should invest in most. My backups are incremental and therefore the speed reduction hasn't really impacted my ability to backup critical data as it runs over night and the chunks are not that big.

Yes, it is the initial seeding of current content of 11-12TB that is the real concern.  After that, it is all incremental. 

 

With CrashPlan it literally took months for the initial seeding and that was only around 4-5TB.

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32 minutes ago, johnwhicker said:

That's not a bad option at all.  If I am not intruding what kind of files are you pushing?  I mostly have phots and videos and some random work related files. 

Is duplicati pretty reliable? My last experience was not good but perhaps it will work better with jottacloud

 

Thanks much

 

Mostly pictures, videos and documents (filled out applications, signed documents, personal files, work files, etc).

 

Duplicati creates a local db (index) of the files you have encrypted, sliced into smaller chunks and uploaded to the cloud. It is your responsibility to backup duplicati data, without it you'd be dead in the water. 

 

Is it reliable? I haven't had issues until I pushed over 40TB for testing of (large) bogus content. At that time I noticed that if the backup was interrupted it had difficulties restarting.

 

Now if you want turn-key solution, backblaze is pretty good. As for me personally, I am OK with jottacloud. I have multiple unraid servers (5 to be exact) and one only gets turned on to do rsync for backups of the critical stuff.

 

The general rule of thumb is the '3-2-1 backup'.  3 copies of the critical data, 2 physical and 1 remote (cloud). Anything that is critical, have it initially on the redundant storage array, separate copy stored on an external drive/USB/another server and one copy (encrypted) on a cloud provider just in case.

 

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26 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

Yes, it is the initial seeding of current content of 11-12TB that is the real concern.  After that, it is all incremental. 

 

With CrashPlan it literally took months for the initial seeding and that was only around 4-5TB.

 

You should be fine, even the slow down doesn't kick in right away. They give you leeway for a bit before they enforce it.

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On 12/14/2020 at 2:27 AM, jonp said:

Very true statements in here.  The reality is that subscriptions by themselves aren't the problem.  There are plenty of things I bet even the harshest critics of subscriptions pay for every month.  What about your ISP?  What about XBOX Live or Netflix?  Subscriptions aren't by themselves the problem.  Sub-par offerings bundled into a subscription are the problem.  We don't intend to do that.  We also don't intend to force anyone to pay for a subscription.  Anything we charge for will be worth its weight and justifiable.  If its not, there's a simple solution to that:  just don't sign up ;-)

 

In addition, we also need to note that some users can't afford to drop $59-129 all up front for Unraid.  Instead, they'd prefer a lower monthly price point to get them in the door for far less.  Any idea how many fewer Plex users there would be if they only offered their lifetime pass option and no monthly?  I would wager quite a few less.

I'm not sure the comparison is totally valid.

Services such as my ISP, cable TV, CuriosityStream, and Disney+, provide a recurring service.  My ISP, incurs costs to keep my internet running efficiently (including and not limited to replacing or repairing equipment as needed without charging me for said).  They have consumable costs that need to be covered to continue to provide their service.  Cable TV and streaming services are providing fresh content which is a recurring cost.  A piece of static (or nearly static) software provided at a one time cost is appropriate.  I loathe the whole concept of "software as a service", as it takes away from me the customer, to keep using a product I have paid for in perpetuity, without the whims of the producer to eliminate my use of it if they see fit.  I'm sure we can all find examples of products that have stopped working because the service required to enable it's functionality has passed on.  I was recently struggling with just this problem, where I have a customer with an old SBS 2003 server that for a short time I needed to move to a VM, but could not as the online (and phone) registration systems refused to allow me to reactivate the license.  I was then stuck with a dying server, trapped documents, and a rather anxious client.  It was nothing more than a glorified file cabinet for their needs, but it was as if someone had snapped off the wrong key in the lock.

 

As I said before, I'm not opposed to the concept of repurchase in the case of MAJOR upgrades; they just have to be of sufficient value to entice me to want to upgrade.  I can say personally, that I would be resistant to individual "features" under unRAID requiring a recurring licensing fee; one-time I might entertain.

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1 hour ago, spazmc said:

So what is wrong with Unraid charging for cloud based backup. If you want it?

Some of you are already paying someone else to to do it.

I'm fine with LimeTech charging subscription fees for any kind of service, whether cloud-based backup, priority access to tech support, or any other service for which they incur ongoing costs.  I hope such services are made available to licensees as well as future customers who choose to acquire Unraid through subscriptions.  

 

As long as LimeTech continues to offer traditional (non-subscription) Unraid OS licenses that include access to all 'core OS features' and upgrades, I will be rooting for them as they expand their customer base and revenue stream through subscription offerings.  After all, it's in my best interests as a customer for LimeTech to be a thriving, profitable business.  

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It is important that users who choose a non subscription model, even if that is just implicit by the fact they use only the traditional unRAID product, that there be no phone home or other services that reach out of the system by lieu of the subscription services running in "off" mode of or any other mechanism.

 

I cannot stress this enough. Feel free to add value in whatever way suits your business but dont break that trust model whilst doing so.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 12/13/2020 at 11:27 PM, jonp said:

Very true statements in here.  The reality is that subscriptions by themselves aren't the problem.  There are plenty of things I bet even the harshest critics of subscriptions pay for every month.  What about your ISP?  What about XBOX Live or Netflix?  Subscriptions aren't by themselves the problem.  Sub-par offerings bundled into a subscription are the problem.  We don't intend to do that.  We also don't intend to force anyone to pay for a subscription.  Anything we charge for will be worth its weight and justifiable.  If its not, there's a simple solution to that:  just don't sign up ;-)

 

In addition, we also need to note that some users can't afford to drop $59-129 all up front for Unraid.  Instead, they'd prefer a lower monthly price point to get them in the door for far less.  Any idea how many fewer Plex users there would be if they only offered their lifetime pass option and no monthly?  I would wager quite a few less.

I cannot remember when but one September or fall time, PLEX offered Lifetime Pass for $29.  I gave my money right away.  That was many years ago 

 

 

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  • 2 months later...
Quote

~12m: The Future of Unraid (6.9, 6.10 and beyond)

 

Can somebody remove "6.10 and beyond" from the announcement. In fact there's not one single word about the future of Unraid "6.10 and beyond" in this self-hosted podcast beside "[...] can't say anything yet [...]".

 

6.9 details are mentioned only.

 

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